communicate :: collaborate :: commemorate

My readership is quite international (see small map in the sidebar), so I should write everything in English, right? Wrong. Most of my readers speak German as their first language and learned English in school. I learned half a dozen languages, but I can only speak and write two of those with confidence. So I like to write German in about half of my posts, to make my German readers feel at home here.

Thomas suggested today that I put a translate button on my site for those people who do not understand the languages I write in. Thomas is from Sweden so his native language is one that I do not understand at all. But technology helps. If I encounter a language on the web that I do not understand, I use technology to help me out. For the iPhone there is Google Translate and Microsoft Translator, and probably a whole lot more.

I suggested to Thomas to use a browser plugin instead of me putting in a translate link. Since he was on the iPhone he shared my German post with Microsoft Translator and got the same one in English. Exciting times we live in.

Ouch. I've always been under the impression that your German-language posts were more relevant to German visitors, while your English-language posts were aimed at international readers. I don't know where I got that idea, but I've always been absolutely certain of it. So I've generally skipped the German posts. I have a variety of tools that could translate them, but I usually haven't done so. And now you're telling me I've missed lots of good content over the years. Bummer.

deepl is really impressive. My personal observation is that it especially outperforms Google translate in translating complete sentences. Even technical documentations get translated in a very good quality.

For texts I use Google Translate and Microsoft Translator on iOS - the OCR & in-place translation is really awesome at times. In the desktop I use Google Translate via Web UI.
For individual words I usually turn to leo.dict.org.

DeepL - number one for complete sentences. By far outperforming anything else I have tried out so far.
Google Translate for iOS and Chrome Browser translation in everyday use and for exotic languages.
In addition, dict.leo.org and for English: Oxford English Dictionary (not really for translations, but very valuable).
I'll need to try Microsoft Translator.

As someone who put a lot of effort into learning German, only to return to the UK into an industry which made little/no effort to use anything but English, I take great delight in trying to read German posts.
To assist I use reverso.net which I was introduced to during my course as it includes extra features such as Conjugation and context so you can see options for that snippet you put in to be translated. I have not compared this with other tools but the extras help me believe I have not given up yet.